Blog

Now I’m living in Nashville. I’ve now lived exactly one week in my own little house with one of my fellow singer-songwriter roommates. I’ve cleaned my kitchen every day (a shocking fact) and not hated it (again, shocking). I’ve done my dishes every day. I’ve made my bed every day (okay, that’s a lie, I didn’t make it today).

Have you ever had a recurring dream? Why do we have these? Usually, recurring dreams or nightmares reveal that there is an issue in your life that you have not acknowledged. These dreams are often the way your subconscious processes a past trauma, future fear, or present dilemma.

There is a certain history-making in the act of thrift-shopping. Objects go from person to person, the original owner giving it to their sister for her birthday and that sister putting it in a white elephant gift exchange for Christmas and that recipient selling it at a garage sale and that customer later getting bored of it and donating it to a thrift store. Each object has a circle of life; you never know how many different hands have touched it (this isn’t meant to gross you out—it’s kinda cool if you think about it).

You will always remember the letters you receive. I grew up having pen-pals, whether they were little girls who just lived down the street, or girls I’d never met who were paired with me through a pen-pal program. Writing these letters kept me connected in times when I was lonely or felt friendless. Hearing another person’s story in intentional, written form is a completely transformative experience that just isn’t the same through email or text. I remember getting up early every morning and running down the driveway to check the mail, waiting anxiously for the next update in my friends’ lives.

There are many, many types of people, and one of life’s biggest struggles is finding a way to get along with all of them. When someone has different interests and passions than you, how do you relate to them? I am here to advise you on how to get along with an especially odd group: music majors.

People who have chosen to pursue a career in the unstable, unpredictable world of music are a rare breed indeed. They’re the ones with the imaginative minds and the loveable scatterbrained personalities. They’re the ones...

My 2016 was a mess, to say the least. Every January 1st I promise myself that this year, it’ll be my year. It’ll be the year I get my life together and become the person I want to be. And yet, every December 31st I find myself disappointed in my own inadequacy and the choices I made during that year. I’m disappointed that I can’t see the growth I thought God would give me that year, and confused as to why my static faith continued while I watched tragedy after tragedy strike.

Last December 31st, I made a list of 16 New Year’s resolutions, and a 2015 “motto” as well. I was super into the idea that a new year is a totally fresh start and that January 1st was an ideal time to start living my life differently. I even wrote them on a giant sheet of neon paper and hung them on my wall. Today I found these 16 resolutions as I was thinking about the beginning of next year, and decided to review each of them and see how I did. Commence the recap of my 2015 (mostly highs, who wants to dwell on lows?).

God, I thank you for the gift of every new morning; the opportunity to wake up revived and overwhelmed by grace. I thank you for the small reminders you place in our lives of your goodness and mercy. I thank you for the chance that I have to lay my burdens at your feet, to talk to my beloved Savior, and for your constant presence and care. Thank you for the cross, and for your unbelievable mercy that we are defined by.

So I’m going back to school tomorrow (shhhh I know most of you are already back and I’m a little late to the ballgame, but Christian liberal arts colleges and their lateness, man). Crazy, right? I swear yesterday was June 7th and I’d just gotten back from Ireland and was dreading the ridiculously long summer looming over me. And now it’s gone, just like that.

I feel like I didn’t really do much this summer since I was at both jobs pretty much every day, but somehow I also feel like I did a ton. A lot was accomplished...

Sometimes I don’t even understand the depth of human love. I guess that’s because it’s something God created, something modeled after God’s own love for us, and it’s so so beautiful. I’ve been overwhelmed lately by the amount of wonderful people God has given me the opportunity to know.

I promise you this is not another blog post about why gay marriage is biblically sinful or why it's not, whether or not the Confederate flag should be allowed to fly, or a rant about how horrible it is that no one cares that planned parenthood is (supposedly) selling dead baby parts for profit. I don’t read the news much. Or at least I didn’t. I never knew what was going on whatsoever, to the point that the other day when twitter notified me of the trending hashtag “#PrayForLouisville” I flipped out and was like oh no what did I miss? (it turned out just being a bunch of losers complaining about the weather.

Well, it has been extremely hard to get back to blogging. For so long I’ve been struggling with what to write about...somehow simultaneously there are way too many topics swarming around in my head and none at all. I guess I’ll talk about this in between stage I’m at in my life right now. And by right now, I mean literally right now...the summer after freshman year of college.

Hey y'all. I've been super busy, and struggling to put my thoughts into words. I've had lots of ideas and lots of growth happening, and have been thinking a lot about the meaning of love and the meaning of forgiveness, and the meaning of time and death and God and Christianity and all that stuff. All great blog material, but once again, I can't really figure out how to put it into words. Last time I tried...

This is my second blog on fear, and in this one I’m going to focus on the fear of what others think of you. Self-doubt is one of the most destructive feelings in the world. It’s a nagging thought that eats away at your mind and influences your actions and emotions and relationships and everything else about your life. It’s like a virus in your body that starts out really small, and then slowly grows until it overtakes you and you can’t view yourself in a positive light anymore. All of this self-doubt is fueled by how others view you. But why does it matter? Who cares if people like you?

I hate fear. I think that fear is something that runs most of civilization, most of life, most people, most circumstances and decisions. I hate it. There are a couple main kinds of fear that tend to take control. Fear of failure. Fear of what people think of you. Fear of the truth. Fear of the past.

I’m hopefully going to do a four-blog series on these fears, but this time I’m gonna focus on the last one: fear of the past.

Christmas is commercialized. We've all heard it before, the Christian ramblings of how Jesus is getting taken out of the equation and that Christmas is a pagan holiday and that we are feeding this culture's materialistic obsession. I would say most blog posts written by Christians are about how Christmas has deteriorated into a cultural phenomena instead of a day and a season to celebrate Christ's birth. But let's take all of that out of the equation and think: as Christians, are we really celebrating what Christmas is about? Are we fully taking in the depth of the meaning of Christ's birth?

It's been raining here non-stop for about a week. Rain is miserable. Rain depresses me. It makes me want to stay in bed for the entirety of my life and sleep and watch sad movies like the Notebook and eat chocolate and listen to Taylor Swift. I find it extremely hard to function and have a normal day. When the sky is crying, so should I, right? Right? So it really sucks when I have to get up for an 8:30 class, walk through the rain, get soaked despite my cute little red umbrella ...

The lights shine so brightly they almost blur your vision, but your eyes glisten under them. You can't see the audience over the lights, but you can hear them screaming. You smile at the attention, entranced by the beauty of the lights and the set and the people all staring at you in adoration. You could never feel the same sort of rush even if you suddenly sprouted wings and flew. You could never feel more at home, or more whole in that moment. Lord, let this be about you and not about me.

I've been reading this book called Unchristian by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons for a class I'm in here at school. The title might be deceiving; it's a book about how the rest of the world views Christianity and how Christians turn unbelievers away from Christ. It focuses on the cultural divide and how this generation is pushing Christianity away more rapidly than any other generation. In Chapter 6 of Unchristian, Kinnaman describes how Christians are perceived as living in their own bubble, aloof and unconnected to the world.

“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the serving of others.” - Gandhi Monday, August 24, had a miserable beginning. I had stayed out with friends until 4 in the morning, and had gotten a grand total of 2 ½ hours of sleep. The heat was already being foreshadowed by the golden sun, even at 8am. Everyone gathered in the DC rather quietly.

This was the day of the New Student Orientation service project trip to East St. Louis. Service is always a great idea and something we all preach about, but how many of us actually want to do the hard work that it requires? I can't speak for others, but I was grumpy and reluctant to do anything but sleep.

As I sit here in my college dorm room, I look at my piles of unfinished homework and wonder how I'm ever going to get it all done. I worry about what tomorrow will look like and despair at the fact that I can never know enough to get me through these classes and into certain social groups and out of unpleasant situations. Then I'm reminded of the amazing truth that God knows everything. He not only knows everything, but He has planned everything out from the very beginning. He knows what I'm going to eat tomorrow morning for breakfast(if anything at all), He knows how I'm going to do on Friday's theory quiz, He knows if my college debt will ever go away, He knows who I'm going to marry...